Landscape — the Journal of the Landscape Institute

Very worth while study, as this is and will be at the heart of UK Landscape for years to come. I think it would be interesting to take a look at HS2 in the wider sense from London - Birmingham and beyond, moving away from a London centric approach.

Some of the most challenging issues are from nimbyism and the effect on the Chilterns. How could we adapt and mitigate the effects through good landscape design?

This would all be fine if the trains were infrequent and chugged along at a slow speed. It is worthless when they are due to run so fast that passengers won’t notice the views outside. Even if they were put into practice, no amount of flowers / water ripples will ever offset the noise, disruption and pollution that HS2 will cause.

I think you all need to look more closely at the technical spec of this project. 576 high speed trains a day, with dangerously high levels of noise. The DfT documents talk about a dead zone each side where no vegetation can grow and the line will be accompanied by sub stations and unsightly gantries.

Instead of talking pie in the sky maybe you should use this project as an opportunity to ensure sustainable development - which HS2 is not.
One comment was right - it’s too fast for passengers to see. All mitigation must be aimed at those who have to live near it - not the passengers experience - they have already chosen to use a highly polluting, non-green, high speed train. So their view/environment is not their priority.
To think one of you made a plan with no fence between the trains and community allotments!!!
that would be lethal - literally

The comment above about nimbys is totally out of line, innocent home owners must be treated fairly. But people who want/choose to work on this project or hope to benefit financially are the real vested interests. Please don’t fall for they hype of HS2 - a drain on tax payers and hideous to boot.

I’m not sure if you or the cuckoo land students who created these dreamscapes actually appreciate how ridiculous and incredibly insulting, hurtful and insensitive they are to the tens of thousands of people who live along the proposed HS2 route whose lives are going to be ruined by HS2. They don’t think they just come from rural Tory heartlands. My council and MP are both Labour and I live in a lower middle class area.

5 students given 2 weeks each to come up with landscape designs?! No time to talk to local people or anything like that.

‘The Institute proposed the student work to elevate the level of discussion about the project, noting that a ‘bold vision that might set a new agenda appears to be lacking’ - no wonder it got government approval then - the agenda clearly being to entirely ignore the situation of those affected by HS2 and douse visual consumers of the artwork with the ‘look how beautiful HS2 can be if we have enough magic mushrooms’ propaganda in the guise of ‘positive thinking’.

The ‘Ribbons of Life’ image - aside from the fact that there is no barrier between the 250kph train and people’s allotments a few metres away from people’s allotments - ?! - bathes HS2 in colour and light while leaving everyone’s homes in darkness. The image has about as much link to reality as Mr Blobby.

‘The students’ proposals include an ‘experimental sound garden harvesting noise and vibration from the trains to create energy and a re-interpretation of railway platforms as stages for agricultural and community use.” Again - yes, of course, noise can be ‘harvested’ to be used for energy can’t it?! This has been scientifically proven hasn’t it?!

This is now the realm of Alice in Wonderland.

To clarify anyone stupid enough to take any of this seriously there is absolutely nothing sustainable about HS2. In 2007, the government commissioned Eddington report found that building and operating a new north-south rail network in England would generate more CO2 than taking the same route by air over a 60-year period. “There is no potential carbon benefit in building a new line on the London to Manchester route over the 60-year appraisal period. In essence, the additional carbon emitted by building and operating a new rail route is larger than the entire quantity of carbon emitted by the air services,” said the report. The Eddington Report stated “Given that domestic aviation accounts for 1.2 per cent of the UK’s carbon emissions, it is unlikely that building a high-cost, energy-intensive very high-speed train network is going to be a sensible way to reduce UK emissions.”

HS2’s power requirement varies as the square of the running speed so at 225 mph (360kph) it would requires 3 1/4 times the power of a train running at 125 mph (200kph). For HS2 trains running at the track’s design speed of 250 mph (400kph) power required increases to 4 times. More power requires more energy. HS2 Ltd state that a journey time saving of 3.5 minutes consumes 23% more energy (300kph to 360kph). The facts are clear and frightening.

HS2 is not high speed in fact at all, but in the words of the Green Party of England and Wales ‘ultra-high speed’. Ultra high speed broadband is the only real green solution that would meet the business case for HS2 but instead of spending £1.1bn on upgrading the nation’s broadband and bringing the internet to the 5.7m homes in the UK without it we are spending £80bn on HS2 which will be used by the tiny minority of people who can afford it and who regularly commute long distance - 95% of journeys are made locally. Otherwise HS2 is nothing more than a glamour project: the 21st century Concorde, destined to heavy losses to the public purse and devastating environmental blight.

One student proposes to bring the line back above ground wherever possible to ‘enhance the experience of passengers’ and ‘give ownership back to the community’. Has the student actually redefined: ‘oxymoron’?!

This reminds me what one woman from HS2 Ltd said to me at one of the ‘Community Forums’ HS2 Ltd is undertaking along the route - ‘I am here to set out how we can empower your community through real visibility’ - no you’re not - you’re being paid a big fat salary to engage in a massive PR exercise.

The only people who really own their communities are the people campaigning against HS2. The government wants Big Society - well thats exactly what we’re giving them. Standing up for our communities.